Thank you Mr Prospect for the thousands of times when I tried to cold call you and you carved out my liver for being too bland, too much like the competition, too weak and too stupid to recognise you were busy, you don’t care about my needs or my agenda, my company or my product, you taught me to understand you first, what matters to you, what keeps you up at night, what prevents you from getting the important things done that make a difference to you (apart from my calls of course). You taught me that I needed to break the pattern of the usual cold calls you receive, to get your permission to tell you what I do and to be mindful of how precious you feel your time is.
You taught me not to waste your time or mine if I couldn’t help you, but you also taught me to uncover the real reasons why you’ll buy from me without beating me to death on price. And thank you for the times you promised you’d be at the appointed place when we agreed to meet and you didn’t show up or you showed up without the necessary people so I had a wasted journey or wet my powder giving premature presentations to an incomplete decision making committee (probably after having worried about our meeting all weekend!!). You taught me to stand firm, plant my feet and not tolerate your unreasonable behaviour, to recognise rejection is a rejection of my offer and not me, and not to worry about things I can’t control.
Thank you Mr Prospect for all the times you messed me around and changed your mind, you taught me to take nothing for granted. Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you lied to me, misled me and deceived me though you always said it was salespeople who were untrustworthy, self-interested and deceitful, you taught me to qualify hard and recognise you aren’t the king, you’re my equal; nothing more, nothing less. Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you manipulated, bullied and pressured me into abdicating my rights and for teaching me only I could give away my self respect and dignity.
Thank you Mr Prospect for everytime you gave me false hope so that you could get me to give you free consulting and confidential procing so you could you use my skills, knowledge and expertise to get more from your other suppliers, shop my proposals around town or ddevelop a solution for yourself using all I’d told you as the foundation for that solution. that you for helping me to realise the syntax of qualify, present, close, follow up was wrong. Just because that’s the way you’ve taught other salespeople to behave doesn’t mean I have to do it that way. Moses didn’t come down and the lost 11th commandment was “thou shalt do proposals” nor is it “thou shalt sell the way everyone else has sold in your industry”. I’ve learned that if the competition is doing, I should probably find a different way to do things. I’ve also learned that wirting proposals unless I know I’m going to win them in 90%+ of instances is a hiding to nothing and will probably hurt my credibility and success in the sale later on, let alone leave myself vulnerable to yoru using objections against me.
Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you asked me the one question I was hoping you wouldn’t ask. You taught me to prepare better and practice more, but above all, you taught me not to hide my weaknesses or my fears, and to confront them early, even making myself vulnerable by disclosing them to you up front. You taught me how to build and maintain lasting trust by being direct and honest. And you taught me through your tough and unrelenting questions, objections and stalls that I wasn’t the one qualified to handle your objections, you are.
Thank you Mr Prospect for all the dragonesque gatekeepers you regularly put in my way to block me from speaking to you and other key decision makers in your oganisation , some were sweet, others were sour and a fair number were just as scared and frustrated as me. I learned how to use the psycholological blocks I created around cold calling and asking for referrals into a potent referral and new business habit.
Thank you Mr Prospect for pitting me against my competition in bid after bid, tender after tender, preferred supplier review after preferred supplier review. You taught me to value my time more highly, relish the time I spend with my family and never do anythign unless I know why I’m doing it. You also taught me to call you to account when I sense that something is wrong, your intentions behind certain behaviour is that of someone trying to gain the upper hand not your “equal partner”. Thank you.
Thank you Mr Prospect for the times when you promised me the order and then came back and tried to renegotiate on price, service, resources and timescales. Thank you for being hard-nosed, brutish, rude and abrasive, because you taught me who I am is not what I do and how to spearate the two. You also taught me to contract for every step of the sale and to give nothing away without getting something you valued giving, back in return. You taught me to question why you were asking me to do things instead of blindly syaing “yes” and if they didn’t work for me to say so. And above all else, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me the insight to realise I can say “no”, even after we’re doing business.Thank you for teaching me it’s OK to fire a bad customer (or refer them on to a competitor) or one we’ve outgrown.
Thanks also for teaching me the hard way that I can never lose what I never had; I’m sorry for blaming you for my inadequacies, my terrible selling skills, my awful qualification, my clumsy techniques that you’d seen and heard a thousand times before from other incompetent and needy salespeople. I apologise for the times I cursed you and all your kin, for the times I had wicked and malevalent thoughts about you, for the times I wanted to do you physical harm because I was too weak as a salesperson, too stupid as a human being and too desparate for your business for you to trust me. Lord above, if I were in your shoes, I’d have kicked me out sooner, not been nearly as polite or tolerant as you were.
Thank you making me stronger, more effective and the professional salesman I’ve become. Without your prevarication, inconstancy, selfishness and bullying I’d be as green as I was when I started selling over 20 years ago. Thank you for the personal and spiritual growth I’ve enjoyed (sometime kicking and screaming but enjoyed nonetheless) and thank you for helping me to understand people.
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If you want to accelerate your results in selling, I don’t suppose you’d write a letter to your prospects and identify the things they did to you that hurt you, the lessons they taught you and recognise that you have only yourself to blame for all your suffering and failure. I warn you, it will be a scary catharsis.
There’s no such thing as a bad prospect, only bad salespeople.
You have a chance to take control of your performance in the sale by recognising the problems and admitting them. Then you can do something about finding their causes and taking responsibility for fixing them. If you want to email me your thank you letter my email is ThankYouLetter@SALTeurope.com.
Marcus Cauchi
Sandler Sales Institute
London, UK
Marcus Cauchi 